What, exactly, makes one car so much more reliable than the next?

Range Rover is a piece of shite. That’s all I got.

Focus.

Japanese focus heavily on reliability testing.

Germans focus heavily on improvement and over engineering features.

Americans focus heavily on profit margins.

how much and who a company pays to pump their vehicle

The Toyota emblem contains some Mt. Fuji magic that keeps the evil breakdown spirits, known as Chrysler ghosts, away.

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Germans focus heavily on improvement and over engineering features. Americans focus heavily on profit margins.

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And yet, Daimler’s margins historically run almost twice that of Ford.

Like I said, it’s mostly reputation these days. Very little of it is based on modern real world data or apples to apples comparisons.

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Even when comparing autos of comparable prices, some are worlds more reliable than others. Just one example: Land Cruiser versus comparably priced Range Rover. What about the way they are put together accounts for the gap in reliability?

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We learned all about this in Operations Management classes at LSU. It goes back to the Japanese approach to processes and change management.

You hear buzz words now like TQM(Total Quality Management), Continuous Improvement, and Reliability blah blah but these folks are 30 years late to the game.

American plants have had actual "reliability" departments for about 20 years now. This concept is relatively new to American manufacturing.
Japanese plants had this concept ingrained in their mission from inception.
They focus on every detail of the process instead of just the finished product. And any change to that process is scrutinized and tested.

This concept is preached all over the world now but like I said, the Japanese auto manufacturers have a big arse head start.

One hard example I can give you was from the 90s. Toyota relied on 1/3 of the suppliers that Ford did to manufacture vehicles. That hard stark difference was HUGE. You can't manage quality and reliability on thousands of suppliers.
Toyota had tight controls on every supplier and piece of equipment they put in Toyota vehicles. Ford could Never accomplish that on a large scale.

Now Ford took note and fixed this over the next 20 years but they are still facing quality issues with suppliers.

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American plants have had actual "reliability" departments for about 20 years now. This concept is relatively new to American manufacturing.
Japanese plants had this concept ingrained in their mission from inception.

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Actually they learned the concept of continuous improvement and deep process focus from the Americans. American forces brought in under the Marshall plan after WW2 to help rebuild Japan to be specific.

Too bad Ford didn’t pick any of that up.

Repeatability of precision in manufacturing, quality of materials (with emphasis on minimizing flaws), quality control, efficient design…all very important. It’s all about their give-a-damn. Pontiac vs Honda.

Maybe there are also factors outside of 'the way they are put together' which accounts for the gap in reliability?

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What, exactly, makes one car so much more reliable than the next?

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Cars that had dinner around the table with family growing up are statistically more reliable.